e-Business and e-Commerce

e-commerce and e-business e-commerce refers to aspects of online business involving exchanges among customers, business partners and vendors. –For example, suppliers interact with manufacturers, customers interact with sales representatives and shipment providers interact with distributors. e-business encompasses these elements, but also includes operations that are handled within the business itself. –For example, production, development, corporate infrastructure and product management are aspects of e-business not included under the category of e-commerce.

Brick-and-mortar vs. Click-and-mortar Brick-and-mortar business - business that have only a physical presence Click-and-mortar business - business that have both an online and an offline presence.

Kinds of e-Business Models: Store-front ( Auction ( Reverse-auction ( Portals ( Name-your-price ( Comparison-pricing ( Bartering (

e-Marketing Branding Marketing research Marketing Promotions Consumer Tracking Electronic Advertising Search Engines Affiliate programs Public Relations

Consumer Tracking User profiles: account of log-on times, visit durations, purchases made on the site, the site previously visited and the site visited next, etc. Log files - files that contain data generated by site visits, including each visitors location, IP address, time of visit and frequency of visits. Log files are saved on the server. Cookies -are text files stored by Web sites on individuals personal computers.

Electronic Advertising On-line advertising: –Banner advertisements –Pop-up advertisements –Search engines : pay-for performance advertisements. If a user clicks on a companys ad, then the company is charged based on the number of click-throughs to its site generated by that ad. In turn, search engines monitor the number of times users actually click on a companys add to determine its effectiveness and performance.

Search Engines A search engine is a program that scans Web sites for desired content, listing relevant sites on the basis of keywords or other search-engine ranking criteria. Rank - how close to the top a site appears on lists of search results. A meta tag is an XHTML tag that contains information about a Web page. A spider program

Google Google uses complex mathematical formulas that rank relevant Web pages based on factors such as –number of other Web pages that link to the site, –page views, –click-throughs and more. Example: if a Web page contains keywords from a users search, the site is marked, and how many other Web sites reference this page is also noted. The more pages that reference it, the higher the number value Google assigns to it as part of its search formula. Google then calculates the results and returns the Web pages ranked in order of relevancy to the user.

Affiliate programs An affiliate program is a form of partnership in which a company pays affiliates (other companies or individuals) on the basis of prespecified actions by visitors who click- through from an affiliate site to a merchant site. Affiliates post links on each others sites in exchange for referral fees, which usually consist of a percentage of each sale or a fixed fee for click-throughs that result in sales. Amazon.com

Public Relations Public relations ( PR) provides customers and employees with the latest information about products, services and such issues as company promotions and consumer reactions. Press releases, which announce current events and other significant news to the press. –For example, PR Web ( allows marketers to submit press releases to its site for free. Crisis management, an aspect of PR, is conducted in response to problems a company is experiencing.